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  1. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by docterfreeze View Post
    GMs... As far as we know all they do is sit on their island, go invisible, and answer tickets. Well here is my idea to get more botters and exploiters banned-

    1. Two GMs are assigned to each server, one stays on the server for 8-12 hours a day.
    I'd rather Blizzard put the money it would take to pay for 9600 hours worth of Customer Support A DAY to implement better ways to catch botters and exploiters.
    "So my advice is to argue based on the reasons stated, not try to make up or guess at reasons and argue those."
    Greg Street, Riot Developer - 12:50 PM - 25 May 2015

  2. #22
    There is no way a GM can play the game and answer tickets in the same time period.

  3. #23
    You can't assume that someone not doing what is needed in a BG or refusing to speak with you while in a BG is a bot. The only thing GMs could do if they were in the BG with the supposed bots would be to report them and have someone else look into. This would do nothing but generate even more reports. People would be reporting the GMs as they would seem to be bots by just standing there while they tried to communicate with everyone on a team.

  4. #24
    I don't think this idea is going to be very helpful to fight botters, but at least it is an idea and not just plain complaining. The main problem I think, is that every BOT can easily get a function that automatically replies after 10-15 seconds to the GM saying. Sorry, I'm kinda busy at the moment fighting Horde/Alliance.

    The other thing is that I'm personally not convinced that there are really that many botters as everybody claims. I see shit people, sure! But we've had those since forever. To me it just looks like nothing really has changed!

    (i.e. people trying to cap the flag in EotS when all 4 bases are controlled by the opposite faction. Running off into a group of horde while carrying the flag in WSG or something else silly, which does not help with winning!)

  5. #25
    Merely a Setback Kaleredar's Avatar
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    I like world of warcraft. I actually don't mind random battlegrounds.

    But being FORCED to play both of them for 8 hours? I'd go insane.

    One GM in one BG? I'm sure there are tens of thousands of random battlegrounds that go on every day. That wouldn't accomplish much of anything. And not everyone "suspected" of botting is actually botting... some people are just bad players. I've had people shouting at me to stop telling them what to do the entire time as they run into the opposing faction and die repeatedly.

    What I think would work are more severe punishments for botters (I'd even go for naming and shaming,) and to instate limitations on those heavily suspected of botting/on watch for botting. I'd say some sort of Captcha system put in place for said people after BGs end would do wonders, but...
    “Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty detail. For all of these things melt away and drift apart within the obscure traffic of time. Live well and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead.” ~ Emily3, World of Tomorrow
    Quote Originally Posted by Wells View Post
    Kaleredar is right...
    Words to live by.

  6. #26
    I want to throw my 2 cents in about this botting issue. This post may not hit the exact mark of this discussion but it does fall close to the subject of botting and hacking. I was in a Twin Peaks BG one day horde side. As soon as the game started I ran out the side door, mounted up and took off towards the bridge at the front of the keep. About halfway past the bridge and 10-15 seconds after the BG started I noticed the hordes flag was picked up. About 10 seconds later the horde flag was capped. I made my way to the front of the alliance keep and waited for our flag carrier to run out of the front. I turned around and saw the druid who previously capped the flag in cat form floating towards our group. About 4-5 of us unloaded on the druid and he didn't lose a bit of hp while he totally demolished our FC.

    At that point I just stopped what I was doing and opened a ticket. I submitted the ticket and described exactly who this person was and what exactly happened in the BG. The next day I get a response saying my ticket has been serviced blah blah blah. I monitored the players wow armory for about 2 weeks after this incident and never once did anything happen to him. He logged on every day consecutively since. I know Blizzard works to try to curtail "some" of the botters and hackers but I have serious doubts they try as hard as they'd make you believe they are doing.

  7. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by Kaleredar View Post
    I like world of warcraft. I actually don't mind random battlegrounds.

    But being FORCED to play both of them for 8 hours? I'd go insane.

    One GM in one BG? I'm sure there are tens of thousands of random battlegrounds that go on every day. That wouldn't accomplish much of anything. And not everyone "suspected" of botting is actually botting... some people are just bad players. I've had people shouting at me to stop telling them what to do the entire time as they run into the opposing faction and die repeatedly.

    What I think would work are more severe punishments for botters (I'd even go for naming and shaming,) and to instate limitations on those heavily suspected of botting/on watch for botting. I'd say some sort of Captcha system put in place for said people after BGs end would do wonders, but...
    Can Blizzard just trademark this word, it is so sickening to see mentioned anymore -_-.

  8. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by velspine View Post
    Can Blizzard just trademark this word, it is so sickening to see mentioned anymore -_-.
    He was talking about a GM being forced to do something for their job. That they're getting paid for. That is specifically what their job would be about.

    What's the problem?

  9. #29
    Quote Originally Posted by Antius View Post
    I want to throw my 2 cents in about this botting issue. This post may not hit the exact mark of this discussion but it does fall close to the subject of botting and hacking. I was in a Twin Peaks BG one day horde side. As soon as the game started I ran out the side door, mounted up and took off towards the bridge at the front of the keep. About halfway past the bridge and 10-15 seconds after the BG started I noticed the hordes flag was picked up. About 10 seconds later the horde flag was capped. I made my way to the front of the alliance keep and waited for our flag carrier to run out of the front. I turned around and saw the druid who previously capped the flag in cat form floating towards our group. About 4-5 of us unloaded on the druid and he didn't lose a bit of hp while he totally demolished our FC.

    At that point I just stopped what I was doing and opened a ticket. I submitted the ticket and described exactly who this person was and what exactly happened in the BG. The next day I get a response saying my ticket has been serviced blah blah blah. I monitored the players wow armory for about 2 weeks after this incident and never once did anything happen to him. He logged on every day consecutively since. I know Blizzard works to try to curtail "some" of the botters and hackers but I have serious doubts they try as hard as they'd make you believe they are doing.
    In this instance, the player wouldn't be banned until their 3-monthly (or so) "ban-wave".

    The reason is simple - a player such as this is using an active hack, something updating player positions in the client memory. The new positions are sent to the server, which the server then "accepts". The reason for using this method is it drastically reduces packet-resends required whenever the player experiences the teensiest bit of lag to ensure they're in the correct position. It also means that the server only has to constantly stream current player positions to the server, and doesn't have to "take back" or revoke discrepancies, which would also meen revoking actions, recalculating everything that's taken place, etc. Basically, this architecture of accepting where a client says it is rather than the server deciding where that player should be, drastically decreases the size and frequency of packets required which is a huge cost saving for a company with this many players. And it works for MMOs, because precise player positioning isn't as important as in, say, a first person shooter. The down-side of it is it means the client can be running a hack which updates their position to wherever they want and the server just accepts it, ie, allowing speed and teleport hacks.

    So, why doesn't Blizzard ban straight away? Because they want to build Warden to be able to detect it. Developers and hack-makers are in a constant battle, where for instance, a hack is released, and then the developer has to build detection for that hack, so then the cheaters write routines to avoid that detection, and the developer has to write new routines to work around the workaround, so then the cheaters write routines to avoid THAT detection, and so on and so forth. It's a brutal cycle.

    The difficulty for developers is that it's far easier to simply obsfuscate a routine better than it is to detect that obfuscation. Basically it's always going to take developers much longer and much more work than it's going to take the hackers to hide their routines. They'll put their code in polymorphic executables which run as routines called by another, unconnected executable, etc. So Blizzard have to write a routine to specifically detect that code in use, at which stage hackers just slightly change the code, put it in a different part of memory, give the original process a different name and voila - they're back in business.

    For this reason, Blizzard don't immediately ban detected hacks. If they did, then the hackers would know the instant a certain cheat method is detectable, and simply roll out the next iteration. Blizzard would forever be behind and unable to detect cheaters who'd simply be updating their software daily as soon as they know a certain hack is detectable.

    By doing bans in waves, it means that once they've learned how to detect a certain hack method, they can then busily collect data on who's using that hack, for weeks. People who think they're safely undetectable are continuing to hack, taking even more risks, and getting more evidence against them as they go. When Blizzard do eventually do the ban wave, then they're not spending that time trying to detect new hacks - they've already been detecting the new hacks for weeks. Sure enough the hackers will then bring out new versions of their cheats, but by that stage a large number of cheating accounts will have been banned meaning the cheaters will need to decide if they want to give up or pony up for a new account and keep the cycle going.

    Unfortunately, because so many cheaters just don't care about their fellow players, this cycle will continue into perpetuity, but at least a few script kiddies lose some cash and time along the way.

    The most important thing is to keep reporting cheaters, because sometimes Blizzard won't even know where to look if you don't tell them - it's their own code which is allowing this particular cheat method to operate and won't necessarily look like anything wrong is happening until someone tells them and then they can start to investigate where the player was, when, what buffs they had, if they were being fired by a machine, etc. You can't simply have the server trying to analyze all this in realtime because it's way too much data, and would require too much processing overhead to be constantly checking position updates for EVERY player, just to catch the small percentage that are cheating.

    There's a reason why *nobody* has managed to crack the problem of cheaters yet (although some companies can detect certain cheats in real time.. it depends on the scenario we're looking at as to whether its feasible), and it's simply because the advantage is always in the cheaters favor. The best we can do is detect them and deprive them of some cash at a later date.
    Last edited by Janaa; 2013-01-30 at 03:42 AM.
    Quote Originally Posted by DSRilk View Post
    The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught.

  10. #30
    Just sick of the word haha, if you ever used the site FunnyJunk, the creator of the site does pranks on the people and changes certain words to phrases.

    Would like to see that done for that word just to make it more dramatic!

    Like people should start calling WoW a sweatshop!

  11. #31
    Banned docterfreeze's Avatar
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    Sorry if my idea doesn't appeal to most of you, I was just brainstorming how to rid the game of botters and made a thread... Also, thanks for your input Arax, if more Gms piped up and spoke to the community like you then we would all feel a little better about the company.

  12. #32
    Quote Originally Posted by docterfreeze View Post
    Sorry if my idea doesn't appeal to most of you, I was just brainstorming how to rid the game of botters and made a thread... Also, thanks for your input Arax, if more Gms piped up and spoke to the community like you then we would all feel a little better about the company.
    I'm pretty sure it didn't appeal to any of us, as it wasn't firmly based in reality and instead presupposed that Blizzard had enough money to throw away 1000 peoples annual salaries on a method of reporting that would cause more problems than it would solve.

    But you managed to draw a blue out of the woodwork, so I guess there's that...

  13. #33
    Banned docterfreeze's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Luciferiuz View Post
    I'm pretty sure it didn't appeal to any of us, as it wasn't firmly based in reality and instead presupposed that Blizzard had enough money to throw away 1000 peoples annual salaries on a method of reporting that would cause more problems than it would solve.

    But you managed to draw a blue out of the woodwork, so I guess there's that...
    Looks like you need to read some of the other posts and stop being so single minded...

    This is actually the second time that particular blue has posted on one of my threads, probably because he specializes in GM stuff, and those kinds of threads are somewhat rare.

  14. #34
    Merely a Setback Kaleredar's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by velspine View Post
    Can Blizzard just trademark this word, it is so sickening to see mentioned anymore -_-.
    "forced to play" in the fact that it's THEIR JOB AND THEY HAVE TO DO IT IF THEY WANT TO REMAIN HIRED.

    It's not some comment on how players incorrectly perceive that they have to do anything in this game.

    Please read context before you decide to flip out.
    “Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty detail. For all of these things melt away and drift apart within the obscure traffic of time. Live well and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead.” ~ Emily3, World of Tomorrow
    Quote Originally Posted by Wells View Post
    Kaleredar is right...
    Words to live by.

  15. #35
    Quote Originally Posted by Kaleredar View Post
    "forced to play" in the fact that it's THEIR JOB AND THEY HAVE TO DO IT IF THEY WANT TO REMAIN HIRED.

    It's not some comment on how players incorrectly perceive that they have to do anything in this game.

    Please read context before you decide to flip out.
    Not one thing indicated that I "flipped out" I just said forced is getting used to much, use a different one, also posting in all caps gives you +25 on internets and increases your flipout meter.

    Good day.

  16. #36
    Spam Assassin! MoanaLisa's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by docterfreeze View Post
    Now imagine in that 12 hour shift, you are playing your favorite video game... time flies AND you get payed for it.
    Being forced to play your favorite video game for 12 hours a day as your job is a good way to make it not your favorite video game in a hurry. I suspect they have more of a workload answering tickets than you imagine. There wouldn't be a lot of time, if any, to play.
    "...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."

  17. #37
    The Undying Wildtree's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by docterfreeze View Post
    GMs... As far as we know all they do is sit on their island, go invisible, and answer tickets. Well here is my idea to get more botters and exploiters banned-

    1. Two GMs are assigned to each server, one stays on the server for 8-12 hours a day. When his shift is up, the night-time GM moderates the server for 8-12 hours (They get breaks, sick days, vacations, just like you and me) When a GM is sick or on vacation, just one GM moderates the server that day... he does his shift for 8-12 hours and for the rest of the day the server is not moderated.

    2. The GMs while on their shifts put on PvP gear and Queue for random battlegrounds. While they are waiting for the queue, they stay in main cities, answering tickets and moderating trade chat. In the battleground, if they see a suspicious player, they request to chat with them, if the player does not respond for the entirety of the battleground, the player gets another chat request... if after 10 minutes they continue to be unresponsive, they receive a one-day suspension for botting. After their BG ends, they take 30 minutes to answer tickets, moderate trade chat, and moderate popular areas for hackers and botters.

    If you have any ideas to improve upon this, please... let me know!


    If you are worried about payment, just think to yourself that Blizzard makes billions of dollars a year... trust me, they have enough to fund their employees.
    it appears to me, that you don't have a concept of income / profits and expenses.
    First of all, you need 3 people to cover 24 hours. 12 hour shifts won't fly for long. Those 3 people aren't enough though. You need more, since the 3 have vacations, have weekends, getting sick, and what not all else is there in the catalog of downtimes of employees. You need temps to fill in.
    Now we count the number of realms, multiply that and getting an amount of how many hundred employees are needed to babysit the players in real time.
    I am not worried about the payment... Because I know Blizzard does NOT make billions every year.
    For WOW the math is simple... You can count $13.99 X 10 mio. and you got pretty much the monthly revenue inc from subs. Why only 13.99? Because of different payment methods and currency differences you cannot count with the $14.99. It's only 1 dollar per sub count in the math, but adds up over 12 month and 10 mio subs. Anyhow, that number total is the gross revenue. But there's the damn family too.. Especially Uncle Sam... He is a needy Basterd. He wants a junk of that money to be given to him, and calls it Taxes. How dare he..
    After all it's said and done.... Let's see how much there's really left.
    And then you want to suddenly create at least 1000 jobs for the US Realms alone? Let alone the other zones... Which also need the same staff amounts.

    ---------- Post added 2013-01-30 at 02:03 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by MoanaLisa View Post
    Being forced to play your favorite video game for 12 hours a day as your job is a good way to make it not your favorite video game in a hurry. I suspect they have more of a workload answering tickets than you imagine. There wouldn't be a lot of time, if any, to play.
    Lets not forget that since WoW is a multi region game, it's against work laws to run overtime on a regular basis in many countries.
    As an Employer in Germany for example you have to apply for overtime approval with the dept of workforce. If you happen to have a constant need to cover the hours with so many manpower you MUST hire additional people, instead of having the fewer people work overtime on a daily basis.
    Like in our example, 2 people constantly working 12 hour shifts, plus even the weekends.. That wouldn't go through in Germany. That calls for at least 4 employees.
    Plain math would say. 12 hours X 7 = 84 hours per week without a day off... That's more than 2 40 hour weeks right there. So instead of 2, it would be at least 5 - 6 employees per realm. Plus the temps that have to do the work when the regulars are on vacation, sick etc..

  18. #38
    Quote Originally Posted by Sam the Wiser View Post
    Whats with people wanting 24/7 super vision on wow...
    this... exactly
    Think for yourself.

  19. #39
    The Lightbringer Highlord Hanibuhl's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by docterfreeze View Post
    What do you mean by "work"? In the instance I described above, their only work would be to play and game while also moderating and answering tickets... It's their job, after all.
    Dude... seriously? Can you hear how dumb you sound? Senjinone made it perfectly clear. They are not PLAYING the game. They are working. GM's who are playing the game during work-hours should be fired and banned!

    And have you ever worked a 12-hour shift for 5 days a week? I have and I can tell you it's no laughing matter.

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